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Tensors and Tensor Products for Physicists

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Tensors and Tensor Products for Physicists Tensors and Tensor Products for Physicists Nadir Jeevanjee NOTE: This is a rough draft and I would appreciate feedback. Please send any and all questions, comments, criticisms, or suggestions to [email protected]. Last updated 1/10/2007. 0Copyright c 2006 Nadir Jeevanjee 1 Contents Preface 4 1 Vector Spaces 6 1.1 Definition and Examples . 6 1.2 Span, Linear Independence and Bases . 10 1.3 Components . 13 1.4 Linear Operators . 15 1.5 Dual Spaces . 19 1.6 Non-Degenerate Hermitian Forms . 21 1.7 Non-Degenerate Hermitian Forms and Dual Spaces . 26 Chapter 1 Problems . 29 2 Tensors 33 2.1 Definition and Examples . 33 2.2 Change of Basis . 36 2.3 The Tensor Product - Definition and Properties . 43 2.4 Tensor Products of V and V ∗ ...................... 45 2.5 Applications of the Tensor Product in Classical Physics . 48 2.6 Applications of the Tensor Product in Quantum Physics . 50 2.7 Symmetric and Antisymmetric Tensors . 58 Chapter 2 Problems . 68 3 Groups, Lie Groups and Lie Algebras 71 3.1 Groups - Definition and Examples . 72 3.2 Homomorphism and Isomorphism . 82 Chapter 3 Problems . 84 Dirac Dictionary 86 2 Bibliography 87 3 Preface This text is written at the beginning graduate level, and aims to demystify tensors and provide a unified framework for understanding them in all the different contexts in which they arise in physics. The word tensor is ubiquitous in physics (stress ten- sor, moment of inertia tensor, field tensor, metric tensor, tensor product, etc. etc.) and yet tensors are rarely defined carefully (if at all), and the definition usually has to do with transformation properties, making it difficult to get a feel for these ob- jects. Furthermore, physics texts at the beginning graduate level usually only deal with tensors in their component form, so students wonder what the difference is be- tween a second rank tensor and a matrix, and why new, enigmatic terminology is introduced for something they’ve already seen. The irony of this situation is that a proper understanding of tensors doesn’t require much more mathematics than what most students encounter as undergraduates, and the clarity gained pays dividends far outweighing the modest investment. This text introduces just enough linear al- gebra to set the stage for tensors, with plenty of examples to keep the discussion grounded. After laying the necessary linear algebraic foundations, we give the mod- ern (component-free) definition of tensors, followed by applications. Exercises and problems are included, and the exercises in particular should be done as they arise, or at least carefully considered, as they often fill out the text and provide good practice in using the definitions. It should be said that this text aims to be simultaneously intuitive and rigor- ous. Thus, although much of the language (especially in the examples) is informal, almost all the definitions given are precise and are the same as one would find in a pure math text. This may put off the less mathematically inclined reader; I hope, however, that such a reader will work through his or her discomfort and develop the necessary mathematical sophistication, as the results will be well worth it. As for prerequisites, it is assumed the reader has been through the usual undergraduate physics curriculum, including a “mathematical methods for physicists” course (with at least a cursory treatment of vectors and matrices), as well as the standard up- per division courses in classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, and relativity. Any 4 undergraduate versed in those topics, as well as any graduate student in physics, should be able to read this text. To undergraduates who are eager to learn about tensors but haven’t yet completed the standard curriculum, I apologize; many of the examples and practically all of the motivation for the text come from those courses, and to assume no knowledge of those topics would preclude discussion of the many applications that motivated me to write this text. Hopefully, such students will re- turn to this text once they have completed their upper-division coursework, and find it useful then. Besides the aforementioned prerequisites I’ve also indulged in the use of some very basic mathematical shorthand for brevity’s sake; a guide is below. Enjoy! Some Mathematical Shorthand R The set of real numbers C The set of complex numbers Z the set of positive and negative integers ∈ “is an element of”, “an element of”, i.e. 2 ∈ R reads “2 is an element of the real numbers” ∈/ ”is not an element of” ∀ “for all” ⊂ “is a subset of”, “a subset of” ≡ denotes a definition A × B The set {(a, b)} of all ordered pairs where a ∈ A, b ∈ B. Referred to as the cartesian product of sets A and B. Extends in the obvious way to n-fold products A1 × ... × An. Rn R × ... × R | {z } n times Cn C × ... × C | {z } n times 5 Chapter 1 Vector Spaces Since tensors are basically a special class of functions defined on vector spaces, we must have a good foundation in linear algebra before discussing them. In particular, one needs a little bit more linear algebra than is covered in most sophomore or junior level linear algebra/ODE courses. This chapter starts with the familiar material about vectors, bases, linear operators etc. but eventually moves on to slightly more sophisticated topics that are essential for understanding tensors in physics. As we lay this groundwork, hopefully the reader will also find our slightly more abstract viewpoint useful in clarifying the nature of many of the objects in physics he/she has already encountered. 1.1 Definition and Examples We begin with the definition of an abstract vector space. We’re taught as under- graduates to think of vectors as arrows with a head and a tail, or as ordered triples of real numbers, but physics, and especially quantum mechanics, requires a more abstract notion of vectors. Before reading the definition of an abstract vector space, keep in mind that the definition is supposed to distill all the essential features of vectors as we know them (like addition and scalar multiplication) while detaching the notion of a vector space from specific constructs, like ordered n-tuples of real or complex numbers (denoted as Rn and Cn respectively). The mathematical utility of this is that much of what we know about vector spaces depends only on the essential properties of addition and scalar multiplication, not on other properties particular to Rn or Cn. If we work in the abstract framework and then come across other math- ematical objects that don’t look like Rn or Cn but that are abstract vector spaces, then most everything we know about Rn and Cn will apply to these spaces as well. 6 Physics also forces us to use the abstract definition since many quantum mechanical vector spaces are infinite-dimensional and cannot be viewed as Cn or Rn for any n. An added dividend of the abstract approach is that we will learn to think about vector spaces independently of any basis, which will prove very useful. That said, an abstract vector space is a set V (whose elements are called vectors), together with a set of scalars C (for us, C is always R or C) and operations of addition and scalar multiplication that satisfy the following axioms: 1. v + w = w + v for all v, w in V (Commutativity) 2. v + (w + x) = (v + w) + x for all v, w, x in V (Associativity) 3. There exists a unique vector 0 in V such that v + 0 = v ∀v ∈ V 4. ∀v ∈ V there is a unique vector −v such that v + (−v) = 0 5. c(v + w) = cv + cw ∀v, w ∈ V, c ∈ C (Distributivity) 6. 1v = v for all v in V 7. (c1 + c2)v = c1v + c2v for all scalars c1, c2 and vectors v 8. (c1c2)v = c1(c2v) for all scalars c1, c2 and vectors v Some parts of the definition may seem tedious or trivial, but they are just meant to ensure that the addition and scalar multiplication operations behave the way we expect them too. In determining whether a set is a vector space or not, one is usually most concerned with defining addition in such a way that the set is closed under addition and that axioms 3 and 4 are satisfied; most of the other axioms are so natural and obviously satisfied that one, in practice, rarely bothers to check them. That said, let’s look at some examples from physics, most of which will recur throughout the text. Example 1.1 Rn This is the most basic example of a vector space, and the one on which the abstract definition is modeled. Addition and scalar multiplication are defined in the usual way: for v = (v1, v2, . , vn), w = (w1, w2, . , wn) in Rn, we have (v1, v2, . , vn) + (w1, w2, . , wn) = (v1 + w1, v2 + w2, . , vn + wn) (1.1) and c(v1, v2, . , vn) = (cv1, cv2, . , cvn) (1.2) and the reader should check that the axioms are satisfied. These spaces, of course, are basic in physics; R3 is the usual 3 dimensional space we live in, R4 is spacetime 7 in special relativity, and Rn for higher n occurs in classical physics as configuration spaces for multiparticle systems (i.e. R6 is the configuration space in the classic two- body problem, as you need six coordinates to specify the position of two particles in three-dimensional space). Example 1.2 Cn This is another basic example - addition and scalar multiplication are defined as for Rn, and the axioms are again straightforward to verify.
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